1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus having a data playback function and, more particularly, to a database creation method for the electronic apparatus with a portable media device connected thereto.
2. Description of the Related Art
In-vehicle audio apparatuses have functions of playing back data stored in, for example, compact discs (CDs) or digital versatile disks (DVDs) and also have functions of playing back, for example, music data or video data stored in portable media devices connected to the in-vehicle audio apparatuses. The storage capacities of such portable media devices are steadily increasing and the number of pieces of the music data stored in the portable media devices sometimes increases into the thousands. Accordingly, it is necessary to create databases of the music data in the portable media devices in order to retrieve the music data.
With regard to a database of data stored in a portable media device, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-132063 discloses an information processing apparatus capable of automatically creating a database of content data distributed among multiple playback apparatuses so that the content data stored in a certain playback apparatus can be shared among the other playback apparatuses.
Since portable media devices storing, for example, music data generally provide only file systems, it is necessary for in-vehicle audio apparatuses to directly operate the files and folders in the portable media devices. Accordingly, in order to retrieve music data stored in the portable media devices, the in-vehicle audio apparatuses should confirm the files in the portable media devices in advance one by one to create and hold a database of the music data stored in the portable media device. A database is created in the following manner in related art.
First, an in-vehicle audio apparatus analyzes the file system of a portable media device connected to the in-vehicle audio apparatus to collect folder and/or file information. Next, the in-vehicle audio apparatus extracts tag information (detailed information) from music data in all the files and registers the tag information in a database. The tag information includes artist names, album names, music names, and so on, which are available as retrieval information used in retrieval of the music data. The in-vehicle audio apparatus reads out the tag information included in each piece of the music data to create the database and to display the music data stored in the portable media device in a display on the basis of the database. A user of the in-vehicle audio apparatus selects a desired music data from the music data displayed in the display. The in-vehicle audio apparatus reads out the music data selected by the user from the portable media device to play back the readout music data.
However, it takes a long time to create the database with the increasing number of the pieces of the music data stored in the portable media device. Accordingly, there is a problem in that the user can search for a desired music data only after the creation of the database is completed after connection of the portable media device was recognized.